


a man takes his sadness down to the river (and throws it in)

by Ro29



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: (It's jason again), Bruce Wayne Has Issues, Bruce Wayne Needs a Hug, Bruce Wayne is Trying, Child Death, Crime Alley is not a fun place, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I am nothing if not a dramatic bitch, I apologize for it but also I apologize for nothing, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Inconsistent writing style is inconsistent, It's JASON, Jason Todd Feels, No Batarangs were thrown at any Jasons during the making of this fic, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, fuck that one particular issue of under the red hood, he loves his kids okay, we all know who the major character death is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:55:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24585703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ro29/pseuds/Ro29
Summary: When Bruce Wayne first takes him in, Jason Todd is a foot shorter than most kids his age and weighs 80 pounds sopping wet on a good day.(Jason Todd dies half a foot shorter than most kids his age and 100 pounds soaking wet. Forever 15, forever a child in Bruce’s mind.)But there is more than that, both before and after.The dead always leave someone behind.(or; Bruce before, during, and after the death and resurrection of one Jason Peter Todd.)
Relationships: Alfred Pennyworth & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 20
Kudos: 102





	a man takes his sadness down to the river (and throws it in)

**Author's Note:**

> Title of the fic is from 'Boot Theory' by Richard Siken
> 
> The chapter title is part of a quote by Oscar Wilde.
> 
> There is a brief mention to a pedophile who preys on crime alley kids, Jason is just reminded about an encounter he had that someone saved him from and there is talk about how Jason feels he has no right to have nightmare over it when he hadn't thought about it much at all. If you want to skip that then skip the part that starts with "The night Jason first comes to him after a nightmare..." and you can continue again at "After that, Jason starts finding Bruce.."
> 
> There are a lot of references to grief and mourning and unhealthy coping mechanisms as well as a child death (Jason).

When Bruce Wayne first takes him in, Jason Todd is a foot shorter than most kids his age and weighs 80 pounds sopping wet on a good day.

He does not talk about himself, and he does not draw attention to himself.

And Bruce is lonely and drowning in guilt over Dick Grayson and so desperate to help Jason that he doesn’t notice it, thinks it’s simply Jason getting used to the Manor, which is so very different from the streets.

It’s Alfred who makes him realize that he’s wrong.

It’s Alfred who tells him about how Jason’s been enjoying the library and the various things they’ve found he likes, the little hobbies the boy’s picked up since coming to live with them.

And it’s when Alfred starts talking about how Jason enjoys just sitting with Alfred as he cooks or bakes and keeping him company that Bruce realizes that he knows none of this.

He sees so little of Jason that it’s almost like the child is a ghost, and he never gets to see the smart funny child Alfred is talking about, only one who’s scared and reserved, quiet.

It feels like an ice pick in his heart, frost creeping over his sternum, dread pooling in his stomach.

Jason doesn’t talk about himself, and he doesn’t stay in the room alone with Bruce and he is quiet and uncomfortable and Bruce doesn’t know what to do.

(And a sinking feeling creeps in, a hunch that he hopes isn’t right because if it is Bruce’s heart might break a little.)

__________

Bruce tries to talk to Jason more after that, he doesn’t push too hard, because he’s worried he’ll spook the boy, but he does try to make Jason feel more comfortable.

During lunch one day, when Alfred has managed to get them to sit down for it at the same time Bruce asks if he can join Jason in the library some time,

“I’m always so busy I never seem to be able to read there,” he explains, “And I was hoping that my presence would be okay?”

Jason purses his lips, narrows his eyes and it reminds Bruce of an interrogation room.

Jason bites his lip, and looks down after a long minute, shifting in his seat, “Sure. I guess, I don’t know Mr. Wayne, ‘s your house.”

Bruce hesitates because Jason has been calling Bruce ‘Mr. Wayne’ since he got here and Bruce is always hoping that he’ll get comfortable enough to drop it.

He clears his throat, “It’s just Bruce, Jay.”

It’s quiet for a minute before Jay shrugs and says, “Okay Bruce, yeah, you can come and read with me sometime.”

Bruce smiles, small but genuine, at him and Jason grins a bit.

__________

Jason is a wonderful kid, and he’s _smart_. Which is why Bruce had been hoping that Jason would see that being Robin could only lead to something bad happening and not want to take on the role.

Bruce of course, underestimates just how much Jason feels the need to help others.

And because he knows that Jason will go out whether Bruce wants him to or not, whether he’s experienced or not, whether he can fight or not, Bruce says yes.

So he trains him, and he pushes him harder than he should but not to the point where Jason can’t do it, just enough to make sure Jason can protect himself.

(He doesn’t want a repeat of Dick, refuses to let his child get injured enough that he fears they’re dead, not this time.)

Jason doesn’t flinch when they spar.

Jason doesn’t flinch when they start going out and people come at him with fists and knives and guns, he doesn’t flinch at fights and scraps and villains or muggers.

No, Jason flinches at shouting and feeling exposed, he flinches when he thinks they’re upset at him, he flinches when Bruce opens the door and thinks Bruce is about to come in.

(Bruce starts knocking before he opens the door, and he makes sure that Jason gets used to him asking to come in.)

He flinches when he thinks he’s somewhere he isn’t supposed to be and he tries to act defiant to cover up how scared he gets sometimes and the ice cold dread in Bruce’s stomach is slowly solidifying.

But Bruce doesn’t ask, he doesn’t question it, and slowly Jason stops being so tense around him all the time, stops expecting probing questions about his reactions to things.

(Bruce should have known better.)

__________

The night Jason first comes to him after a nightmare that left him scared and needing to talk had been almost two months after Bruce had adopted him.

Jason has been acting weird ever since he’d come home and it had unsettled both Bruce and Alfred

The nightmares themselves weren’t a new thing, they had been happening on and off since the first night Jason came to the Manor.

And there wasn’t really anything either Alfred or Bruce could do about it.

Jason clearly didn’t trust them completely and after a while it seemed like Jason was finally getting at least enough sleep to function, so Bruce didn’t bring it up.

(There were too many things in Jason’s life that could have contributed, too many things that Jason had gone through that he shouldn’t have had to. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair and Bruce couldn’t force it out of him, it would have only ended up hurting Jason worse.

So Bruce had chosen to watch and to wait.)

Jason that night, had gone down to the BatCave and had sat waiting for Bruce to come in from patrol.

When Bruce came in Jason wiped at his face and Bruce froze, checking Jay over quickly to make sure he was okay.

Jason smiled at him, “Heya B, how was patrol?”

Bruce sighed, pushed the cowl back, “Good. Why are you down here?”

Jason stills, shrugs, and curls into himself a little and Bruce purses his lips.

“Jay-lad?”

Jason shrugs again, shakes his head, “Nothing, nightmare I mean, that's all, nothing much”

Bruce looks Jay over, this shivering slip of a boy and gives him a small smile, “Meet you up in the library?”

Jason smiles back, “Yeah, I’ll make us some cocoa yeah?”

Bruce ruffles his hair, “Thanks Jay.”

And after Bruce gets out of the suit, showers and comes upstairs, Jason is standing in the library with the cocoa’s and seemingly waiting, Bruce knocks on the door softly and Jason turns to give Bruce a smile, he hands Bruce his cocoa and Bruce nods, presses a kiss to Jason’s forehead and sits down.

Jason seems to debate with himself for a second, nose wrinkling, before he sits down next to Bruce and curls up against his side.

Jason doesn’t look up at Bruce and he doesn’t talk for a second, just drink his cocoa.

Bruce stays quiet, sips at his cocoa and runs a hand through Jason’s curls.

Eventually Jason shifts, makes himself smaller, and starts to talk.

“It’s stupid, because this never really bothers me anymore, it was a scary thing that happend but not something that like my life revolved around for too long ya know? I had bigger things to worry about and worse things happen to me. But, I saw this guy outside the school today, and he looked like someone I—well okay, so there was this guy in the Alley and we all knew he liked kids.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow and Jason bit his lip, “Not in the good, ‘oh kids are cute and I’ll be a great parent’ kind of way, in the bad way. So all the kids in the alley tried to steer clear of him. I, uh, I wasn’ pay’n attention one day and he grabbed me. He didn’t get far, there was this lady who stopped him, hit him over the head with something and got me to run. I don’t know what happened to her after, I was too busy getting away. And I guess the guy today reminded me of him and getting reminded of it brought it all up again and, well, I’m up now.”

Bruce hugs him, “I’m sorry that happened to you Jay-lad.”

“That’s the thing!” Jason says, “Nothing even happened, it wasn’t even like a big deal or anything so I don’t know why it woke me up.”

Bruce sighs, “Just because it didn’t progress or it wasn’t the scariest thing to ever happen to you doesn’t mean that it wasn’t scary. Nightmares and fears aren’t necessarily logic based. And you didn’t really process it so much as saw something else as worse at the time so your brain pushed it to the back burner. It got brought up today and now your brain is making you process it.”

Jason frowns, “Well I don’t like it.”

Bruce presses a kiss to his hair, “I don’t either, and I’m sorry you were in that position to begin with.”

Jason shrugs, “Thanks for listening, Bruce.”

After that, Jason starts finding Bruce after his nightmares wake him up.

Not every night, just on what Bruce has figured out are the worst nights.

One night had found Jason once again in the cave, but he was shaking this time, no blanket in sight, only in pajamas and tear tracks on his face.

The second Bruce comes in he throws himself at Bruce and hugs him as tight as he can.

When Bruce asks what’s wrong Jason just shakes his head crying even more and whispering ‘ _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry’_ over and over again.

(It had been a school night and Jason himself had voted to stay in to finish an essay for English as opposed to patrolling.

Bruce goes back to watch the camera’s footage in the cave afterwards, to check how long Jason had sat there, it had been almost an hour and a half, with Jason shivering and hugging himself as tight as he could.

He’d been crying for most of it, silent tears.)

Jason doesn’t tell Bruce everything, just the gist of it, but from what Jason says, it’s about Catherine’s death and the possibility of Jason failing so badly it kills Bruce all mixed into one.

That night is not an easy one and Bruce holds Jason as he cries.

He presses kisses to Jason’s forehead and hair and whispers a constant stream of “I’m here sweetheart, I’m right here baby, you’re okay, I’m okay, I’m sorry baby, I’m sorry.” until Jason stops sobbing, hiccupping and sniffling instead, curled up against Bruce’s chest.

They’re on the ground and Bruce is still in the suit but Jason needs him so it doesn’t really matter.

__________

It’s a night in for the both of them, and Jason is more comfortable in the house and with Bruce and they’ve had stumbles, and discoveries of things that trigger Jason that make Bruce want to tear Willis Todd’s heart out, but things are okay and Jason is smiling more and opening up.

Bruce is reading on the couch when Jason flops onto the couch beside him and Bruce grunts.

“B.” Jason sing-songs.

Bruce’s lip twitches up and he sets his book down, “Yes?”

Jason smiles, bright and cheerful, “They released a movie adaption of Pride and Prejudice.”

Bruce suppresses a grin, “I thought that it was an overrated book?” He raises an eyebrow and Jason frowns.

“Listen, I just think that people should read Jane Austen’s other works too! Pride and Prejudice is an awesome book! But she has others that are just as good and better.” He pouts, “But I wanna see the movie, _please_ Bruce.”

Bruce smiles, ruffles Jason’s hair and hugs the boy close, “Sure Jay, we’ll watch it. Person who points out the most inaccuracies between book and movie gets the whole next batch of Alfred’s cookies?”

Jason giggles and tries to smooth his hair back down—a difficult and, in the end impossible, task—he grins up at Bruce, wide and genuine and happy, “You’re on old man, those cookies are _mine._ ”

Bruce chuckles, “Don’t count me out too early Jay-lad.”

Jason snickers, cuddling up to Bruce, “I didn’t hear any denial on the old man part.”

Bruce huffs, “Oh yes, I’m practically ancient, my 30-plus years on the earth have made me all knowing and wise.”

Jason laughs and sits back up, “Well we can’t have you getting too big a head now can we?”

Bruce brushes a few wayward curls away from Jason’s face and smiles, “You’re right, I must have someone around to keep me humble.”

He presses a kiss to Jason’s forehead, “Good thing I have you, huh Jay?”

His baby smiles again and Bruce can feel half of his world light up.

(Dick carries the other half of his world)

_(And later, his world will be shared amongst all of his children, but for now there are two parts of his world and he can only really make one smile consistently so he takes what he can get and cherishes it.)_

In the morning, Alfred will find them on the couch, reading together and drinking hot cocoa and scold them for not sleeping but it will be worth it, just to have that time with Jay, just to make his baby smile like nothing’s wrong in the world.

__________

Bruce doesn’t want to believe Jason pushed Felipe Garzonas. Jason is a sweet kid and he wants to do what’s right for people and he isn’t violent.

But Jason has a heart that's too big and too empathetic and with how out of character Jason’s been acting it—it’s hard for Bruce to be sure.

The cave is quiet and Jason is shaking and Bruce doesn't want to believe it but—

But the look in Jason’s eyes is worrying.

He doesn’t follow up on it, he knows he should, but Jason is shaking and the cave is quiet and Jason is hugging himself as tight as he can.

Bruce sends him to bed.

(Later, after Jose Garzonas takes Jim Gordon hostage and dies, he tries to tell Jason that no matter what you do, actions will always have consequences.

Jason purses his lips, his eyes angry, “I _know_.”)

__________

Jason Todd dies half a foot shorter than most kids his age and 100 pounds soaking wet. Forever 15, forever a child in Bruce’s mind.

Bruce, in the aftermath is split through, flayed open and hollowed out.

He is living in a world where his son no longer breathes and it feels like the world is ending. He closes his eyes and sees Jason's broken body and it's the look on his face that haunts him. The resignation and fear still painted on his face, even in death.

Bruce Wayne is cracked open, his grief is a wound, bleeding out and infected.

He locks the library.

Not immediately, he spends the first week afterwards ( _after losing his baby, after holding his son's cooling corpse in his arms, after feeling the explosion that will destroy his world rattle his bones and sear his skin)_ in the library, sitting on the ground in front of Jason's favourite reading spot and looking through the pile of books that were next on Jason's list to read.

Jason will never read them now. Will never finish these books or sit in this spot again or enter this room and Bruce's grief burns.

He stands up, walks out of the library and locks the door.

(It doesn't open again until Tim asks if he has a library and Bruce swallows around the knot in his throat and nods, gives Tim the keys.

Tim never moves the books next to Jason's spot, and something sticks in his throat whenever he notices them.

They are all living with the ghost of a 15 year old boy with curly hair, a giant smile and too big a heart for his own good.)

__________

When Dick and he were still on speaking terms—when Dick was still Robin and still only counted as a pre-teen by the most generous of standards—they had been winding down from a draining patrol and one of them had turned on Planet Earth and started watching it, and it had been okay for a while, until the African Dogs had started to hunt the Impala.

Dick had gone still while watching as the pack had started to sink their teeth in, tearing the Impala apart and ripping it open, gut completely ripped out and the carcass being torn up even more as they all fought to get a bite, Dick had gripped Bruce’s hand tightly and asked to change the show and Bruce had.

Later Dick had told him that it wasn’t so much the fact that the Impala had died, though that had played a big role, but the thought of the camera crew just watching it happen, it was important for survival but the fact that people were making money off of something like that, made him feel nauseous.

(And Bruce suspected that spending the beginning of his life around the circus animals had made Dick soft towards them, and that seeing them kill each other had been painful. Dick had never liked watching animals kill each other.)

And he understands what Dick meant now, he feels sick seeing all the people who speculate about Jason’s death, who make up wild theories about what happened, who seem not to care that Jason was a child and was his son and meant the world to him.

And the fact that Sheila Haywood could have ever handed her son, her amazing child who was bright and funny and kind and empathetic, over to the Joker willingly would never fail to make him feel sick.

The fact that Bruce had found Jason lying on top of her body, that he had tried to shield her as best as he could _despite_ that, and despite whatever had happened in that warehouse that Bruce didn’t know about, had ripped something out of him.

It had taken his heart and crushed it, bloody and bruised and stabbed through with glass shards.

He can’t find it in himself to care that she is dead, not when his baby is dead by her hands just as much as by the Joker’s hands.

Not when he’s lost that bright little boy who was so good despite everything the world had put him through, who was kind and willing to help people and knew too much about the horrors of Gotham and still cheered Bruce up.

Bruce, after Ethiopia, after holding his baby’s still warm corpse in his arms, after losing a boy who should have had so much more time left—who he put in danger and who he failed—is very different. He is angry and hurting, he is a shell, everything dug out of him with every breath he breathes that Jason doesn’t.

He pushes Dick away, pushes the League away, and isolates himself with his own guilt and grief and anger and it is suffocating but less than he deserves.

__________

There is no true moving on for Bruce, not after—after. After his baby, his child.

Half of his world has gone dark and there is some ugly thing rearing it’s head in his chest, macabre and oozing and bitter.

Somewhere along the way, the bottom of bottles become more appealing than ever, the enticing ability to forget that his son is dead and that he is alone even though it is a loneliness of his own doing.

He doesn’t talk to Dick, not after his eldest had confronted him about keeping Jason’s death from him, not after what had followed.

(Regret takes an ugly shape in Bruce’s heart and the guilt warps it even more.)

Bruce had spent years trying to move on after his parents death and had never fully succeeded.

He doubted this would be any different.

(There are scars and marks on his heart from different things, but the holes in his heart have grown from a string of pearls and two bullets into a crowbar and a smile.)

He tips himself over into oblivion and does not think about Alfred’s mournful looks. Doesn’t think about the choked cries he sometimes can hear when Alfred will step into Jason’s room out of habit and realize his mistake.

(Alfred Pennyworth has lost a grandchild and is mourning him even as he slowly loses a son.

Alfred is holding himself together in an attempt to help Bruce and is only finding more ways his heart can break.)

There is one night, a bad one, where Bruce is sitting in the cave and staring at all of the trophies from cases when Jason was Robin and, soon enough he can’t bear to look at them.

The result is not pretty, it is Bruce’s grief and rage at a world he has known was unfair but was still blindsided by and culminated into pure destruction.

He throws things and he screams and he sobs and begs and pleads.

And by the end of it, there is broken glass scattered on the ground, a bin full of every trophy that reminded him of Jason and blood dripping from his hands.

The silence in the wake of it is haunting and when Bruce looks up from the destruction he has wrought, Alfred is standing on the steps and staring.

Bruce doesn’t really have anything he can say.

(The next morning, after Bruce has picked the glass out of his hands and disinfected the cuts, he finds the cave sparkling clean and the bin gone.

He thanks Alfred at Breakfast and Alfred gives him a sad look, “Eat your food Master Bruce, you’re getting too thin, and hopefully the food will be enough to counter the alcohol.”

Bruce flinches and avoids looking Alfred in the eyes.)

The Case goes up within the week and it’s a reminder to himself.

(It’s his guilt given form.)

__________

Dick calls him and speaks before Bruce can say a thing.

“Someone knows.”

Bruce almost stops breathing.

“What,” He growls, “did you say.”

Dick sighs, “There’s a kid who knows our identities, he came over to my apartment to talk about how you’ve been absolutely brutal when you take people down recently. Bruce, he’s known since he was 9, since I was Robin.”

Bruce grits his teeth, “He’s had the potential to give us up for _years_?”

“Yes,” Dick agrees, “But the important part of all of this is that he _didn’t_ Bruce. Don’t freak out over this okay? I already did that, I’m pretty sure I scared him enough.”

Bruce seethes silently, “And why did he come to you?”

Dick sighs, “I already told you B, he’s noticed that since,” Dick falters, “since Jason you’ve been putting people in the hospital, Clark told me he had to stop you from _killing_ the Joker, Bruce. And as much as having the Joker out of everyone’s lives would be great, you don’t _kill,_ B.”

Bruce clenched his fist, “Clark is a gossip who needs to stay in his own city, and I’m doing just fine protecting _my city_.”

Dick groans, “You aren’t letting anyone _help_ you B, and honestly fuck you, you weren’t the only one affected by his death, Bruce. You didn’t even _tell me,_ I found out because of Danny, if it was up to you I never would have known.”

A shard of ice is stabbing his sternum, sinking into his chest deeper and deeper as the conversation goes on.

“You,” Bruce snarls, “Never liked Jason, I loved him and I lost him, he was my _child_ and you barely graced him with the title of brother before he—” He cuts himself off breathing heavily.

There is a beat of silence filled only with the sound of breathing.

“I did love him,” Dick answers, a cold type of angry that meant he was holding back a mountain of rage, “You and I might have been at odds but after the initial jealousy—after I took time to accept the fact that you so easily adopted him and claimed him as yours—I _got over it_ , I got over myself and I tried to get to know _Jason_. And I loved him and he was my brother despite you. So fuck you Bruce Wayne.”

Dick hangs up and Bruce punches the wall hard enough to hurt.

(A text comes in a few seconds later, from Dick.

‘ _Give the kid a chance, he just wants to help.’_

Bruce leaves him on read.)

__________

Tim is not Jason.

Tim is not Jason and he is not Dick and he is painful to look at.

Tim Drake is smart and he is everything Bruce could ever ask for and he believes with all his heart that Batman needs a Robin.

Bruce doesn’t need a Robin, he needs his children.

(Somewhere along the way the two things have gotten blurred and he is here now without one son, half estranged from the other, and suddenly worrying over this bright child who can seemingly just leave home for days with no one to care about where he’s been.

Bruce has never loathed Janet and Jack Drake more.

Their son is alive and well, waiting for them to look at him and love him and spend time with him and they don’t, too absorbed in themselves to see and it makes Bruce seethe, that they who still have their child squander their time with him while Bruce did all he could to be there for Jason and he lost him.)

Tim disagrees, “Look me in the eyes Mr. Wayne, and tell me that the chart is wrong.”

The chart, as Tim puts it, is the amount of people Batman has put in the hospital since Jason’s death.

It is exorbitantly high.

Bruce does not say anything and Tim nods.

“You need a Robin and I can help you Mr. Wayne.”

Bruce—well, Bruce has always been weak to children it seems.

(It feels like a betrayal, it feels like replacing his baby and it aches, makes something in him bleed.)

Bruce agrees, but he isn’t letting another child die, he isn’t letting this boy end up like Jason, and this time he will do everything in his power to make sure Tim is ready, that Tim will be able to protect himself.

(Tim trains for over half a year, intentionally longer than Jason trained, and definitely longer than Dick trained.

Bruce will not make the same mistake a third time.)

__________

One thing Bruce re-learns, slowly, stumbling and clumsy in the way that toddlers are, is that loving someone after a tragedy doesn’t mean replacing someone he’s lost.

Eventually, Tim worms his way in and Bruce has suddenly found a way to expand his world, to have given three of his children an equal share in it.

(He never stops mourning Jason Todd, not really, he doesn’t think he knows how. Jay is his son, even in death, still his baby, still part of his world, and for that reason, Bruce can’t find it within himself to smile as much anymore, can’t bear when one the three parts of his world is barren and dark and a reminder of what he’s lost.

Bruce can’t seem to decide between locking everything of Jay’s away or staring at it until his vision goes blurry in some strange hope that it will bring his child back to him.)

Dick comes over once, see’s the dust collecting on what used to be the favourite movies to watch on nights off,—that Jason and Dick and Bruce had all loved to watch—and asks Bruce when the last time he watched Star Wars was and Bruce feels the macabare thing that has become his heart wrench.

Something in Bruce’s reaction gives it away because the colour drains from his eldest’s face and his voice goes quiet.

“Oh.”

“Oh.” Bruce agrees, as if he wasn’t choking.

(Bruce opens a bottle of vodka, after Dick leaves and he is alone with only Alfred in the house, and finishes it off within the hour.

He is not proud of this.

Then again, Bruce is proud of very few of the things he does these days.)

__________

(Tim isn’t sure whether he likes Wayne Manor or not, as much as it’s given him, as wonderful as things can be.

Too many things haunt it for it to ever really be comforting.

There is the ghost of Bruce’s parents built into everything, the rooms and the dishes and the furniture.

There is the ghost of what Bruce was before, before he lost Jason, before he fired Dick.

And there is the ever present ghost of Jason Todd.

Jason lives in the Manor in the way the library was locked, and when it is finally unlocked, in the unfinished stack of books that will never be finished.

He lives in the way his room is the exact same it was before the ill-fated trip to Ethiopia, in the way that it never changes, in the way that Alfred never tidies up the mess of papers on the desk or the bed that's the slightest bit rumpled.

Alfred only ever dusts, as if he’s preserving it for the day Jason finally comes home.

Tim watches and thinks that Jason was loved so much and so fiercely, that loving him is what made everyone hurt so badly.

Love, Tim thinks to himself, seems to be able to hurt you just as much as it can heal you. Make you fall into sadness or soar with joy.

Love, Tim thinks, is dangerous.

His mother had been right about one thing then.)

_(Janet Drake imposes three lessons on her son, how to gather information, how to be invisible, and that love is dangerous and deadly._

_Whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen.)_

__________

Jason is a memory and a ghost and an idol and a son and a brother and a warning and a symbol all rolled up into one.

He is a memory in everyone’s minds, a ghost to those who mourn him, an idol to the kids on Gotham’s streets and to Tim. He is a son to only one still living, but to him he is Jason, Jay, Jase, Jaylad, sweetheart, baby.

He is brother to Dick who is trying to grieve too many things at once and holding too many things on his shoulders and is still trying so hard to help hold the family together and still trying to find a balance with Bruce after everything they’ve said and done to each other.

He is a warning to child heroes and their mentors of what can happen, of the possibilities their line of work has and he is a symbol, to both Bruce Wayne of what he’s lost and to Batman of his own guilt.

(Jason Todd is all of these things. But the important one, the one that people seem to have forgotten in all their talks of symbolism and regret, is that above all, Jason Todd was a boy who wanted to do good.)

Jason Todd was smaller than every other kid his age and weighed less than most of them by almost 40 pounds.

He was witty and sarcastic and his accent was thick and unapologetic. He was weary around anything that seemed too good to be true but he was kind and funny and had a heart too big for his own good. He had terrible things done to him and happen to him and he had seen worse things happen and be done.

And he still smiled, he still liked to read classical books and authors like Jane Austen and Chaucer and Emily Brontë even if he disliked their views or what they had done in life (Hemmingway) because it was _knowledge_. Jason was bright and loving and so many good things despite the bad.

And everyone forgets that focusing on the bad can make the good disappear, erase it from memory and make it seem like it had never happened.

(This is the folly most people make when mourning someone they love though, so it is a forgivable mistake. Grief makes people forget, grief makes people regret and grief makes people do things almost as terrible as love does.)

__________

Bruce does not intend for it to happen.

But he finds that nowadays, though he can remember the exact weight of Jay’s corpse, heavy in his arms, and the look on Jason’s face down to the last detail. Remember the injuries his baby had sustained, from the smoke inhalation to the severe head trauma to the comminuted and oblique fractures, to the way Jason’s blood had looked, staining the Robin suit.

Despite remembering all of this, despite these things so vividly imprinted into his head. He finds he can’t quite remember the sound of Jay’s laugh. He has vague memories of it, but without Jason there it feels like it’s slipping away, as if all the room Bruce has used up memorizing everything about his son’s death had started overwriting the files of his life.

Bruce scours every camera he can find for a recording of Jason laughing and watches and listens to it on loop until he has burned the sound of his child's laughter back into his brain and the way his cheeks dimpled when he smiled is back in his memory.

It’s a terrifying moment. And he spends the rest of the night watching every piece of footage he can find with Jay on it, not wanting to forget even a sliver of what made Jason, Jason.

(He feels like, even now, he is failing that little boy and it is a stab in the chest everytime.

Dick tells him to stop wallowing in his own guilt and regret and martyrdom and to find a way to remember Jason ‘in a way the kid would actually like B’.

Bruce doesn’t speak to him outside of professional business for two weeks.)

__________

(There is a crisis, there is always a crisis, and somewhere in Gotham, a corpse who was once a boy takes his first ragged breaths 6 feet under and gasps, there is no air in the coffin and the boy can’t remember his name or where he is or what’s happening, filled only with the desperate need to _live-survive-get-out-get-out-get- **out**_ that is clawing at him **.**

He almost dies before he ever reaches the surface, tearing through dirt and feeling like he’s drowning.

His fingers are broken, but whether that is the damage that was inflicted upon him before his death or the result of pounding and punching and ripping his way through a coffin and the earth itself is up for debate.

A woman sends people to conceal the overturned grave, after she’s collected her beloved’s son and seen the damage to his mind, seen how he wanders around half catatonic.

Bruce Wayne is none the wiser. And everyone suffers for it in the end.)

__________

Bruce does not forget, he sits in front of the idol he has made for his own guilt and does not think about the fact that this Robin suit is one of extras, that the one Jason had died in had been torn and bloody and in some places was peeled off of his son’s skin where it had fused to the skin from the heat.

It had not been pretty.

It had made him sick enough that he threw up more than once, and there had been a copious amount of alcohol involved to get himself through it all and not throw himself off of a cliff.

There is no sense of accomplishment when he finishes, just a sick empty feeling.

The absence of Jason wrecks him and he does not forget but slowly, so agonizingly slowly, he begins to scab over, the open wound is no longer infected, no longer fresh, but it still bleeds, still stings and burns.

It’s enough.

He hasn’t forgotten and Ethiopia will always mean the loss of his world, but Bruce is trying not to ignore everyone else in his life anymore, trying not to go back to what he had become in his hurt, in his grief.

(He does not like remembering what he became, he despises the memory of his fist against Dick’s face.

He had never thought he would hit a child, hit _his_ child. And it is an ugly realization that it was something he’d done.

There is no excuse for it, and he still grieves for Jason but he is trying to earn his eldest’s forgiveness and to keep Tim from jumping out of his skin at everything and there is so much to do and the knot inside his chest is still so tangled up.

He is trying to unmake what he almost became and trying to remake someone his children might be proud of.)

__________

(The man that was once Jason Todd wakes up fully aware for the first time in 3 years. Two inches shorter than Bruce and 225 pounds of anger and confusion and no longer a child.)

Happy endings are hard won, happy endings mean fighting and biting and tearing with everything you have and giving everything to get there. Happy endings mean blood paid and knuckles bruised and tears shed.

Happy endings are not easy and they rarely mean the ending of anything at all.

But they are hopeful.

And sometimes when they come the world does not fight tooth and nail to rip it away.

Sometimes, things settle, and you get the chance to hope.

__________

His baby is back but at some point along the way Jason—maybe during his death, maybe before that when he was at Joker’s mercy for so long, maybe when his birth mother sold him out, maybe when he came back to life, maybe when he was with Talia—had something inside him shift, something that was less like the brightness from Before and was now more hurt, more bitter, quicker to anger, more vicious when lashing out.

There is a decision somewhere among all of it, to tell someone or to continue on, to keep it to himself.

He chooses the latter option, the selfish option, because if he keeps it to himself, if he avoids saying it out loud, then that means that it isn’t quite real yet.

There are flaws to this logic, he knows. It does not change the desperate need in his chest. The yearning, though yearning for what he isn’t sure.

He does not know whether he is hoping that this is not really his son, just a fake, just something to trick him, lull him into a false sense of security or upset him enough to unbalance him.

He thinks he might be hoping that this really _is_ his child, come back to him from the dead. That this madness is all an act and that Jason will slip into the cave and hug him and smile that slightly gap-toothed grin and call him an old man.

He does not know which would be better. He can not decide if someone using his dead son who he has grieved and mourned and torn himself apart for is worse than the thought of someone using his son and molding him into this person who is so different from the boy he was.

(Bruce never really gets his answer. The truth is a horrible thing that guts him inside and out and Bruce never really figures out which option would’ve been better.)

What he does know is that Jason beats Tim to the point of severe injury. Jason leaves a duffle bag full of severed heads and gives bullets out like he used to give out knowledge and leaves behind a trail of bodies that Bruce can feel weighing on his shoulders as the list grows and grows.

Jason stands before him, eyes lazarus-green and crazed, scared and angry and hurting and as angry as Jason is, Bruce can still see the way that Jason leans away from the Joker, winces when he hears that mad laughter.

And Bruce doesn’t know how to tell Jason that losing him had torn him apart, disassembled him and left him full of ash and despair. Doesn’t know how to put into words how much he missed him, how much he loved Jason, still loves the boy he had been.

Doesn’t know how to say that he still loves him, that if he would just come _home_ —.

(And Jason can’t read his mind, can’t hear the litanies in his head or the eulogy he had written for both Jason and himself, the odes etched into his heart. All Jason can see is the man who let his murderer live, who called him soldier instead of son on a plaque, the man who let Robin live when Jason had died.)

There is a decision, Jason or the Joker.

Kill one.

And it would be so easy, it would be so _so_ easy to do it, but there is a reason Bruce has given himself so many rules, there is a reason Clark had stopped him from killing the Joker all that time ago when he had finally given into the want that had clawed under his skin ever since finding a burning warehouse in Ethiopia that housed his son’s corpse.

Bruce Wayne is not a good man, he is simply a man, he strives to one day _be_ a good man. But he is too much emotion, too much anger and grief and sadness and vengeance to be a good man. A good man does not need rules, and Bruce Wayne has many.

He chooses neither.

(In one reality he makes this decision by throwing a batarang at his child’s neck. But this is a kinder place than that, this is a place for fathers and children and loss and grief and love and hope.

In this universe, Bruce Wayne looks his son in the eye and says that he could never wish for the Joker’s death more than his son’s return. Tells Jason that he could never let himself be made into the kind of man his children would hate, and that killing the Joker would do that, Killing the Joker would turn Bruce into something wretched and consume him.

He looks Jason in the eye and tells him that he has never hated anyone more than the day the Joker killed him, the day Sheila gave him away. Tells him that he had tried going down that path and almost lost himself, had hit his child and turned into something sickening.

And Jason looks at him with angry eyes and shaking hands and clenches his jaw and yells and screams with hurt and vicious righteousness and Bruce aches to hold him in his arms.

Instead, he tells Jason that he can never kill Jason, there is no world that he can think up where he would ever willingly kill Jason. But he can not kill the Joker without turning into someone like Willis Todd.

And Jason trembles and goes quite, goes still. There is something gutted about his expression, something shattered.

No one dies in that warehouse, Joker goes back to Arkham and Jason disappears off into the night.

And Bruce tries not to let himself hope.

**Author's Note:**

> This is trash and I'm sorry but I got too excited and wanted to post and decided that splitting this into two parts would work fine. If you feel like I missed anything tag wise please let me know.
> 
> I had a lot of Jason and Bruce feelings, this was the result. I promise there will be hugs soon. 
> 
> I will write something completely happy one day, I swear. Today is just, not that day.
> 
> Please stay safe everyone.
> 
> [writing tumblr](https://rose-blooms-red.tumblr.com) and [main tumblr](https://themessofthecentury.tumblr.com)


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